Thursday, February 3, 2011

2007 Daglia Canyon Cabernet Rutherford

To all my readers, sorry I haven’t posted in a while. It’s been crazy here, between the Gasparilla festivals, the Warrior Dash, and starting a new job I haven’t had much time to write. I have, however, had plenty of time to drink. I wanted to try a wine that was recommended to me by an associate at total wine. Typically I don’t think they have a clue about anything there, but it was a '07 Napa cab, and it came from Rutherford, so why not?

2007 Daglia Canyon Rutherford Cabernet

Rutherford is known for producing very concentrated fruit, and many of the best cabernets in Napa call it home. I picked this up for $19.95, a little more than usual for me to review, but you pay for terroir. I opened and decanted this wine about 30 minutes before drinking to try to get the wine to open a bit. When I got to it, I noticed viscous concentration, dark ripe cherry, and the typical Rutherford dust. That dustiness is one of the qualities that embody the soil of the Rutherford sub-appellation of the Napa valley. The wine had notes of cassis, was very dry, and possessed a long lingering finish. I still found the wine to be very tight and decided to come back to it every half hour or so. The bottle says it is bottled in French oak, but I didn’t notice it within the first hour. I did notice a slightly off-putting metallic taste, almost irony, and thought it would continue to open up. After sitting in a decanter for 2 hours it developed some cedar notes, reminiscent of the inside of a cigar box. What I noticed at this point was that the wine had fruit, but wasn’t very complex, and it was extremely dry still. It was big, bold, robust, but the lack of complexity was disappointing. I returned 3 hours after decanting and started to get some of the vanilla notes that I associate with the use of French oak.

I have come to a conclusion on this bottle, and it’s not pretty. I would not call this a steal; it gets maybe 2 out of the possible 5 in my new rating system. It just never panned out. If you try this wine give it at least 2-4 years to mellow, and I would recommend decanting for 2 hours. This wine did open up quite a bit over 3 hours, and typically young Rutherford wines need that, but this just didn’t have the whole package. I would equate this wine to a one trick pony; it has power but no finesse. Oh, my original conclusion about the staff at Total Wine was correct. Clueless staff, but they do have a large selection of in-expensive wine. Trade-offs I guess.